The present invention relates to the field of internet security and, more particularly, to the field of collecting internet security news data and, as soon as possible thereafter, providing multi-cast or broadcast internet security alerts to internet users.
Information technology (IT) professionals rely on receiving current and accurate system and network security information. A security threat on the network, such as an internet virus outbreak or an intrusion onto a private network, must be detected and acted upon quickly to protect the resources on the system. Less urgent information such as security tips and techniques from experts, news, and internet “traffic” and “weather” data may be equally valuable. Many common systems provide passive notifications, such as web pages, which are updated by an administrator when new information becomes available. A user may log on and browse to the web page to view the current network status and a listing of current or past security alerts. Active notifications may also be sent to subscribers through electronic mail (email), pager, voice mail, fax, SMS, or instant messaging. Such notifications may arrive in a subscriber's mailbox, in the case of email or voice mail, or may be presented on the subscriber's computer terminal. However, the source of the presented information may be questionable or unreliable and so not be trusted by the user or discarded as SPAM.
When system or network security-relation data is identified as valuable to customers, a short video segment may be prepared and posted to a website for customers to find and watch. Similarly, when time-sensitive security information is received, a forensic analysts may review the information before posting an alert on a website for customers to monitor, or reporting this information by phone to specifically affected customers. The need to rapidly disseminate this information to users often prevents the production of high-quality multimedia data. Instead, simple text, HTML, or the like are used to convey current security information. Rich multimedia content on such topics, if generated at all, may only be generated much later, after recording and producing video to convey the information.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide more current network security information that is reliable and can be trusted, including near real-time video information describing security events and network status. Current systems may not sufficiently provide multimedia content to currently, reliably and accurately describe an event, such as a system or network status update, and current internet security threat, or related breaking news item. Such multimedia data may be merely posted passively for users to observe, or may instead be transmitted to subscribers only after the lengthy production of a multimedia presentation.